Aptitude Tests-The Optimal Hiring Tool

Aptitude tests are a basic requirement for any authentic job screening process. Aptitude tests are used by employers to judge the logical reasoning skills and thinking power of an applicant. Aptitude tests the potential of a candidate to perform a particular task without any prior knowledge. For example, a multiple choice true/false/cannot say reasoning test can help a legal firm hire a lawyer that has the ability to comprehend and draw conclusions from any legal document or a concentration test can help judge the ability of a train driver’s ability to maintain his concentration during the monotonous task of operating the train. These tests are an initial screening process, and they get more specific according to job requirements.

Aptitude tests, provided by the hiring company consist of various sections, which help the recruiter judge the abilities of a candidate that may not be revealed during a face to face interview.

The recruiter must divide the test into various sections as follows:

Numerical tests: Basic numerical tests are a requirement for every job. These tests judge the numerical aptitude of the candidate. The numerical literacy or numeracy part includes easy calculations based on arithmetic operations. The numerical reasoning part includes a higher level of mathematics, involving analysis of numerical data and its interpretation. These parts are important for investment baking jobs, engineering jobs, and managerial posts.

Verbal Reasoning: These test the ability of a candidate to draw logical conclusions from a given passage or text-based riddles. Quick comprehension and good vocabulary at hand are requirements of any verbal test. There are a few language tests which help the hiring personnel judge the soft skills of a candidate through a written test.

Deductive Reasoning: These tests need the candidate to apply a theory to solve the questions presented in the test. This test consists of 3 categories- verbal, non-verbal and numerical. Non-verbal uses shapes and diagrams, verbal use words and numerical uses numbers.

Technical test: These are useful for hiring plant operators, technicians, engineers which require an aptitude for technical rather than prior knowledge of these skills.

Mechanical test-This tests the intuition of a candidate to understand and solve physics-based concepts.

Machine test-This test is useful for candidates who appear for coding and mobile application based jobs. After an interview testing the candidate’s technical knowledge, the machine test is a final proof of the candidate’s practical knowledge in various programming languages.

Spatial Reasoning-Mirror reflections, cubes, spherical surfaces are provided by the recruiter to check the candidate’s ability to process and work with 2 dimensional and 3-dimensional spaces.

Concentration tests-These tests are crucial for jobs that require a high degree of concentration in job performance. Similar data is repeated many times to test the concentration of the applicant. They are relatively simple, but the speed and accuracy required make them difficult to focus on. This helps the recruiter tick the requirements for the job.

Aptitude tests help the hiring personnel hunt for a candidate that fill up all the requirements of their job profiles.